‘You’re looking very dapper, Professor Parish,’ he smiled.
Professor Parish nodded his thanks.
‘Tell me, Professor Parish: is your appearance today voluntary?’
Professor Parish said that it wasn’t.
‘So, what you’re telling the court, Professor Parish, is that someone else told you to wear that suit?’
Professor Parish’s brow furrowed. He said that he failed to understand what his clothes had to do with anything and wondered if Mr McNulty had misunderstood his answer. McNulty reminded the judge that Professor Parish was a hostile witness and requested that he direct him to answer the question. The judge, who also didn’t understand what Professor Parish’s clothes had to do with anything – but interested in McNulty’s line of questioning – told Professor Parish to answer the question.
‘No one told me to wear this suit, Mr McNulty. I chose to wear it myself.’
‘And is this your best suit?’
‘One of them, yes,’ Professor Parish replied.
McNulty then turned to the jury and asked his next question while facing them. ‘So you decided to wear one of your best suits today when you were called as a character witness for Professor MacCabe?’
Parish made no answer and McNulty reminded him that the question required a yes or no answer. Parish shrugged and said yes. McNulty then turned to the jury and repeated that Professor Bob Parish, Head of the History Department at Georgetown University, had decided of his own free will to wear one of his best suits to court that day to give evidence on behalf of his ex-colleague Professor MacCabe. It was probably then he should have sat down and excused the witness, but he persisted.
‘When you were questioned by the FBI, Professor Parish, you told them that Professor MacCabe was an acquired taste and a person it took time to know. Is this correct?’
Professor Parish said that he had indeed said this.
‘And after you spent time getting to know Professor MacCabe and acquired his taste so to speak, what was your opinion of him?’
Professor Parish shuffled in his seat for a moment and then answered. ‘I didn’t like him,’ he said.
McNulty tut-tutted, as if disappointed with Parish as a human being and excused him from the stand. He then turned to the jury and reminded them that Professor Parish had worn one of his best suits to court that morning…
For a man described as a loner and a person best avoided, it came as a surprise to the FBI when they learned that Larry met with a group of people in Volta Park on Saturday mornings. Although the testimony of his supposed friends was less damning than that of his neighbours and former work colleagues, it was also equivocal, and that two of these friends were now dead was another reason for the FBI to be suspicious. Mike Ergle, the substitute organist at the church and local waterfall tuner, claimed to have liked Larry on first meeting but been troubled by some of the things he’d later said. ‘I mean for one, the cat didn’t see anything wrong in killing Pekingese dogs and said he was sympathetic to the communists in China for wanting to do this. His comment was cold, man, as if it was okay to detach yourself from murder.’ And then he recalled Larry’s parting words the Saturday before he supposedly left for Israel. ‘We’d been rapping about the animal service at the church and the dude said he was sorry he was missing it. But then he said something else, something that didn’t register at the time. He said he had a feeling it was going to be a blast. Larry was no hipster, man, and he didn’t carry words like that in his bag. It was out of character for him to speak like that and I’m wondering now if he’d meant it literally.’
Delores Bobo spoke both for herself and Alice when she talked to the FBI. ‘Alice always thought there was something odd about him,’ she said, ‘and she could never understand why Laura had brought him into our group. She felt he was trying to put her down and turn Laura against her. I thought she was over-reacting at the time, but after the night of the Wabanaki Exhibition I realised she’d had him pinned all along. I’ll never forget what he said about the Indians that night or the callous way he said it. He got up and made a speech and told everyone that there was nothing wrong with weak people being destroyed, that it was inevitable and we shouldn’t waste tears on Native Americans who’d had it coming to them anyway. I thought then there was a cruel side to him. In my heart of hearts I don’t believe that Larry has anything to do with the bombs, but if he did, it wouldn’t surprise me. And if that proves to be the case then I’ll never forgive him. Never! How could I when I’d know it was him who killed Button, even though it was me that fell on her?’
Delores told the FBI that Laura had met Larry at the retirement home, and as Laura could neither confirm nor deny this, they decided to interview the staff. Unaware that Larry was the supplier of the DVDs that brought contentment to the centre, they remembered him only as the man who’d brought unease whenever he’d visited. ‘The residents complained about him,’ a senior member of the administrative team told them, ‘and one of them thought he was an emissary of the Devil. We had to ban him from the premises.’
Just as Alice’s voice was silent after the Feast Day of St Francis, so too was Tank’s. By taking it upon himself to remove Moses from the church and risking his life to save others, Tank Newbold had died a hero. His was an act of bravery, of selflessness and duty borne of military service, wrote The Washington News – and all of this was probably true. It was, however, primarily an act of infatuation that caused his death. When Laura had mentioned the vest, and Tank seen Moses approaching Pastor Millsap – the as yet unrequited love of his life – he was motivated not by a desire to save a congregation he barely knew, but by the vision of him and Donna lying in bed together.
Tank’s death was yet another blow to Larry’s defence. Had he been alive he could have corroborated Larry’s choice of the King David Hotel and confirmed his departure to Israel, or at least as far as Rosslyn Metro Station. And he would have stilled the voice of his mother who, in his absence, continued to claim that Larry and Wayne had run over her cat on purpose.
Mrs Newbold had naturally been upset by the news of her son’s death, but not just because he was dead. Tank’s death meant that she’d relocated to Washington for nothing and would now have to think about moving to either Baton Rouge or Chicago. Bereavement was one thing, being inconvenienced another, and by the time the FBI called at her house she was in no mood for sweet talk. That the Bureau had Larry MacCabe in their sights suited her fine.
‘I thought he was a gardener the first time I met him,’ she said. ‘He was at my son’s house cleaning the gutters and Theodore said that he’d thrown a dead squirrel at him. Mr MacCabe tried to laugh it off but I could tell that Theodore hadn’t found it funny, and he made a point of telling Mr MacCabe that he was an acquaintance and not the friend he was claiming to be.
‘He was the last person I expected Theodore to send to my house. And he didn’t come by himself, either. He came with Mr Trout, a young man my son had already warned me about. They looked like a couple of runaways from a homeless shelter. I kept my distance when they were rescuing Maybelline, but once she was safe – and because I’m a Christian lady – I invited them into my house for a cup of coffee. Mr Trout was only wearing one sock and Mr MacCabe had a large hole in one of his. When I noticed this I started to get nervous. It was like having Frank and Jesse James sitting in my living room, and I was more than relieved when they got up to leave. And then…’ Mrs Newbold’s throat caught and she waited for her composure to return. ‘And then they ran over Maybelline! And they did it on purpose and laughed about it. I’ll never forget the looks on their faces, especially that Trout boy’s!’
While one team of agents delved into Larry’s background, another put Wayne’s into the juicer. Charles Town: educational psychologist and Social Services. Washington: psychiatrist and Social Services. It appeared that the Trout boy – as Mrs Newbold referred to him – had struggled in li
fe, but in death hit the Big Time. Had this been his intent on the Day of St Francis? His psychiatrist said no, and that if the FBI thought this, they should make an appointment to see him on a weekly basis.
‘There’s no question in my mind that Wayne was acting for another,’ Dr Respess told them. ‘Wayne was happy being a Nobody. He neither sought nor wanted the Big Time. He was a man of faith and believed that God wished him to live in the shadows.’
‘If he was a man of faith, as you say he was,’ the agent leading the interview asked, ‘why do you think he blew up a church?’
‘I have no idea,’ Dr Respess replied.
‘You mentioned earlier that Wayne heard voices, and that this was the reason he came to see you. Is it possible that one of these voices might have urged him to blow up the church?’
‘I doubt it,’ Dr Respess said. ‘The voices Wayne heard were benign and had started to quieten. Six months from now it’s possible he would have been free of them.’
‘Did he ever mention anyone by the name of Kevin?’
‘In the early years, yes. Kevin was a friend of his, the one who suggested they write the message on the bridge. He was killed in Iraq from what I understand.’
‘And he’s never mentioned him since?’
‘No.’
‘Did he ever mention another person to you?’
‘He mentioned several, but the one he talked about most was an elderly man he’d met in the park. A retired professor, I think.’
‘And what did he say about this person?’
‘He liked him. He said the man wanted to take him under his wing and mould him.’
‘Mould him how?’
‘I’m not sure. He did say once that the man was trying to make him do things he didn’t want to do, but he wasn’t forthcoming on this point.’ (Larry’s explanation that he’d only been trying to improve Wayne’s grammar again failed to make an impression on the FBI.)
‘You said you were certain in your own mind that Wayne would have been acting for another. Why do you think this?’
‘Because Wayne wasn’t a thinker. He was born to be a side-kick, someone else’s lieutenant. He was following his friend Kevin’s instructions when he painted the words on the bridge, and he’ll have been following another person’s instructions when he planted the bombs. But this person would have been a friend, someone he trusted.’
And so, before the FBI had even met Larry, they’d come to a decision. Professor Laurence K MacCabe was a psychopath, a loner who had difficulty forming relationships and a man indifferent to the suffering of animals (Pekingese dogs, squirrels and cats) and humans (Native Americans and Mr Cotton’s wife). He was a person others chose to avoid and described variously as cold and detached, callous, cruel, malevolent and threatening and as either a member of the Jesse James Gang or an emissary of the Devil. Professor Laurence K MacCabe (aka Kevin) was the mastermind behind the bombing of the Church of Latter-Day Lutherans and responsible for the deaths of Joyce Flake (the owner of the tortoise), Alice Manzoni, Theodore Newbold, Dr Eustace Young and Wayne Trout, his unwitting accomplice. He was also the prime suspect in the death of Lydia Flores and the disappearance of Rutherford and Grover MacCabe.
All that stood between them and a conviction was if Professor MacCabe had an alibi and, naturally enough, Larry didn’t – or at least not one he could substantiate.
Larry returned to Washington in the company of two diplomatic attachés, an agent of Mossad and a dentist. He was dressed in the garb of a Hassidic rabbi and had a long grey beard and answered to the name of Lochesh Penzag. The five of them had the first-class to themselves but one was required to sit with Larry. They drew lots and the Mossad agent’s straw was the shortest. He sat down in the seat next to Larry and remained there for the next fifteen hours.
‘Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in an abundance of counsellors there is safety,’ Larry said to the agent once his belt was clipped. ‘That’s your motto,’ he smiled. ‘I don’t know if you know this, but the original motto of Mossad was something else, something along the lines of…’
An hour before the plane landed, and to the relief of the agent, the dentist injected Larry’s gums with novocaine. Although Larry had promised to remain silent while passing through immigration, the Israelis doubted his aptitude for wordlessness and were unprepared to take chances. When in his days of detention had he ever kept his mouth shut? Consequently it was an attaché who spoke for him when they entered the diplomatic channel, explaining to the official on duty that Rabbi Penzag spoke no English, was in Washington to perform a necessary ritual at the embassy and would be returning to Israel in two days. The official stamped their passports and wished them a pleasant stay. (Two days later Rabbi Penzag did return to Israel – this time as the guise for an Israeli citizen suspected of industrial espionage.)
Once in the safety of the El Al terminal Larry’s beard was carefully removed and he was told to take a shower. The clothes in his suitcase were washed in American water and detergent, and all traces of Israeli soil removed from his shoes. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d think we were in New Zealand,’ Larry joked, who was now sitting in an armchair and wearing a bathrobe. ‘I don’t know if you know this about New Zealand but it has very strict biosecurity procedures…’
No one could understand a word Larry was saying and the agent from Mossad asked how long it would be before the novocaine wore off and they could take him to the city. Considering the dosage he’d pumped into Larry’s gums the dentist estimated about another three hours. The agent looked at his watch and then punched the wall with his fist.
Larry was dropped at Dupont Circle and took a taxi to Georgetown. Normally he would have taken the bus but he was tired and wanted to get home. He was looking forward to seeing Moses again and hoped that his extended absence hadn’t caused Wayne too many problems. He told the driver to drop him at Dumbarton Oaks, and from there he walked the short distance to Dent St. It was good to be home he thought, and he breathed the air of Georgetown deep into his lungs. It was less good to be home when he saw the yellow crime scene tape criss-crossing his boarded front door, and worse still when two men stepped out of a car and told him he was under arrest.
The news dumbfounded Larry: Moses dead! Wayne dead! Tank dead! Alice dead! Dr Young dead! A woman he’d never heard of dead! The Church of Latter-Day Lutherans destroyed and his house on Dent St badly damaged! His head filled with thick warm smoke and the insides of his body crumbled. He didn’t speak, was unable to speak, and his stillness was mistaken for indifference. When Helen had died his old world had been destroyed and now his new world was destroyed: Moses, Volta Park, and his friendships with Wayne, Tank and Alice. It was too difficult to take in and so he just sat there blinking and said nothing. And then a man who identified himself as an agent from the FBI asked him why he’d killed his friends and blown up the church and he’d started to laugh and found he couldn’t stop.
The agent nodded at the mirror on the wall and the people behind the mirror nodded back. Done Deal!
Larry spent the following three weeks being shuttled between the City Jail and the FBI’s field offices on 4th St, but once the Grand Jury gave the go-ahead for charges to be brought against him he was sent to a correctional facility in Alexandria to await trial. The evidence against him was circumstantial and hearsay, but the Assistant US Attorney in charge of the prosecution was confident of a conviction, especially as Larry could give no satisfactory explanation as to his movements immediately before, during and after the bombing of the church. ‘But I keep telling you,’ Larry repeated over and again, ‘I was in Israel!’
The problem for Larry was that the government of Israel said that he wasn’t, and claimed to know this for a fact because they ran the country. There was no record of him ever entering or leaving the country in October, and certainly no American citizen had been placed under arrest and held in Ja
ffa that month. What kind of country did America think Israel was? The next thing they’d be accusing them of was having nuclear weapons!
The FBI was apologetic and asked for forbearance while they investigated a claim they too found ridiculous. They didn’t have any axes to grind with the Israeli government they said, but for the sake of justice – which was still a big deal in their country – would it be all right if they approached the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, El Al and the King David Hotel to tie up a few loose ends? Go ahead. Knock yourselves out, the Israeli government told them.
The King David Hotel, although privately owned, was in many ways a government hotel and born to please. No one by the name of Laurence MacCabe had stayed at the hotel in October or eaten in its Garden Restaurant or booked a trip to Masada at the concierge desk they told the FBI.
Similarly El Al, the nation’s flag carrier, was also happy to confirm that Larry had never travelled with them, and apologised for the erroneous information passed to the Transportation Security Administration that indicated he had. It was forwarded by an inexperienced member of staff and the mistake subsequently corrected. Laurence MacCabe had been booked to fly to Israel on the day he stated but in the event had been a no-show. And certainly no Laurence MacCabe had ever flown back to the United States with El Al.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem verified that Larry hadn’t attended the Symposium on Desert Reclamation, and told the FBI that Professor MacCabe had phoned his apologies the previous week from what proved to be a payphone in downtown Washington.
‘Check his clothes if you don’t believe us,’ an attaché at the embassy said. ‘If you find any traces of Israeli washing powder, water or soil on them, I’ll eat my kippah!’
The Israeli ducks were in a row and Larry’s alibi blown out of the water.
If capital punishment hadn’t been forbidden by law in the District of Columbia, Larry would have been as good as dead, and the only man standing between him and a lengthy prison sentence was a personal injury lawyer called Osmo McNulty.
Larry & the Dog People Page 27
