Time's Witness

by Michael Malone

  We kept this gibberish up for five minutes, each trying not to look at the other. Then Paul talked about Bubba Percy's exposé of the House of Lords. Lee said Andy was disgusted to think such a racist club could have existed into the ’70s at Haver University. I said, what made them think it wasn’t still holding secret meetings in some frat house right now? The breeze fluttered the silk sleeves of her blouse, and the loosened gold hair at the nape of her neck. Her finger traced circles around the dark blue rim of the espresso cup.

  “Cuddy, you’re a damn recluse. I’ve missed you,” said Paul, completely unaware that in “three's a crowd,” he was “three.” “You were even skipping basketball games, and that just isn’t you. He's a wild man on the court, Lee.”

  “Is he?” smiled Lee. “He always looks so…calm.” Her calf brushed slowly against my trouser leg.

  “Cuddy calm?” Paul laughed. “He's tense as a bridge cable, always has been.”

  “Really?” smiled Lee.

  I finished my coffee, and made myself stand up. “Look, y’all, I’m already late. Nice to see you again, Lee. Paul, take it easy.” I turned back. “Oh. Gilchrist come home?”

  Paul shook his shock of pale curls. “No. I’ve been asking around. Pete Zaslo said he hadn’t seen Billy since he called me to come get him the last time he passed out at the Silver Comet.”

  “Well, I told you and Isaac to let me lock him up until the trial.”

  With a sad sigh, Paul tugged at his collar. “Billy said he’d go crazy if you did. He promised me he’d stay sober. He was doing so great.”

  “Ah well, promises.” I said good-bye again, put down a dollar fifty for my American coffee, and left.

  I hadn’t wanted to mention to Lee that my appointment was just around the corner, in the nice glass-fronted first floor of an office building on Haver Avenue. The glass front was covered with those Carolina blue posters with Lee's husband's picture on them, and all the way across the top of the glass ran a red-white-and-blue banner that said, DEMOCRATIC HEADQUARTERS. BROOKSIDE FOR GOVERNOR. Inside, there were at least a dozen desks with phones and computers. Young men and young women sat at the desks, staring at their screens or talking on their phones or stuffing envelopes. The whole back wall was covered with a multipanel photo-mural of Andy photographs. Andy amazingly poised in air, about to catch a football, with a hapless moil of pursuers in the mud below. Andy grinning from the cockpit of an F-4C Phantom fighter plane. Andy solemn in military dress at the White House receiving the Medal of Honor. Andy intense in an Aran Island sweater, at a work session at Camp David with a lot of faces everybody would recognize. Andy energetic in a hard-hat, shooting the breeze with construction workers while watching the new Haver University Medical Research Center go up. Andy aglow in shirt sleeves and tie, leaning down from an outdoors platform, shaking the eagerly upstretched hands of quite a press of admiring voters, two-thirds of them women. Andy noble in a suit, receiving a standing ovation from blacks of all ages after the Cooper Hall speech.

  I said to the pretty girl at the first desk, “Looks like you’ve got the whole spectrum covered—touchdown for the right, Coop Hall for the left.”

  She looked up from a book about herbal health and smiled the way you would at someone speaking Swahili at you with a friendly expression. I didn’t bother to translate for her. She put her finger in her book and said, “Can I help you?”

  “You sure may. Jack Molina's expecting me. He here?”

  She pointed at a hallway. “Back there, out through the double doors, down the hall, then take a right. One-o-one. I think Andy's with him.”

  She didn’t even ask for my name. I could have had enough gelignite under my jacket to blow 101 back through the hall and into that photo-mural. Yeah, like Molina said, “Good security.”

  Andy wasn’t, however, back there. From the other side of the closed door to 101 came two extremely angry voices. One I knew belonged to Jack Molina; the other one I deduced pretty quickly belonged to his wife, Debbie. She was saying, or trying to say between sobs, “I don’t care. At this point, I don’t care!”

  “I called four times.”

  “I was at the store! Look! If you want a divorce, then go get a divorce! Just stop threatening me, Jack. Just stop it! I can’t stand it month after month! It's over, but I can’t change the past! And if you really want ‘the truth’ so much, okay, I wouldn’t if I could!”

  I heard the sharp loud thunk of something hitting something. I had my hand on the doorknob when she said, “Oh for Christ's sake, stop it!” It must have been a wall he’d hit, and not her. If he’d hit her that hard, I would have heard it in her voice.

  Jack's voice was like a whip. “I can’t even bear to look at your face. It makes me want to eradicate you!”

  “Then leave me! Or let me leave you!”

  “You’re the mother of my children!”

  I decided this wasn’t the time to find out why Jack Molina had sent a message that he’d like to talk with me at my earliest convenience. I didn’t know what about, but presumably it wasn’t about his marital difficulties. I left fast, closing the hall doors behind me. Three things seemed obvious: Jack had known for some time about his wife's affair with Brookside; the affair had ended; that fact had not had much effect on Molina's feelings. I tried to imagine the Brooksides screaming at each other this way: her about Debbie Molina; him about me. I couldn’t do it.

  Back in the main office, I sat down, shaky, at one of the empty desks for a minute. Near me, some of the volunteers were discussing what sounded like a security nightmare—a huge outdoor rally in Cadmean Stadium. A young black man in jeans and a Haver sweat-shirt walked by me on his way out, a package of leaflets under his arm. Then he recognized me, and stopped. “Mr. Mangum? I’m Eric Solomon. From the Hall vigil? I was at With Liberty and Justice when the police came about the break-in?” He waited for me to place him, then said, “First, well, just—that was okay what you did for the Canaan Twelve. The community service sentences. Just wanted to tell you.”

  The Canaan Twelve? I hadn’t realized they’d named themselves in that leftist numerology style; it sounded like an idea of G.G. Walker's. I said, “It was nothing I did. Dolores Roche is a good judge. There are a few. Tell the Canaan Twelve from me, will you, I like their Cooper Hall Park.”

  He said he’d tell them, then added, “I read you think an ex-cop killed Coop, but you haven’t caught him.”

  “Not yet.”

  He shifted the leaflets to his other arm. “Remember what I said about how Coop's answering machine ran out on me the day he got killed? Did you ever listen to the tape? Because, I was thinking about it again, and—”

  “Somebody had already removed that tape; we never found it.”

  “Oh! Maybe that's why…I mean, I was remembering how Coop had this trick he sometimes did. He’d wait ’til the machine picked up, then he’d answer, and say through the recording, you know, ‘Hang on, I’m here.’ And doing that would make the machine tape the whole conversation, if it was something he wanted a record of. He played me a whole talk he had with a Raleigh reporter once. But, anyhow, I wondered if you’d listened to the tape. Just a thought.”

  It was a good thought. I thanked him for it, and asked for one of his leaflets. It announced that the Hall Committee and the Progressive Coalition (a Haver student political organization) were co-sponsoring with Trinity Church a public discussion on “The Klan in Carolina: Pawns of Power?” Speakers would discuss whether the KKK, neo-Nazis, and other packs of white-supremacy lunatics were just that (lunatics), or whether they were the “manipulated puppets of powerful interests in the state.” (A little of both, had always been my assumption.) Guest speakers would range from Andrew Brookside to a former Grand Dragon who’d gotten born again and quit the Klan. The moderator would be Professor J.T. Molina himself. The cover of the leaflet was the newspaper photo taken at last October's confrontation at Trinity Church: in it, Coop Hall had his arms out to protect the people behind him (one
of them Paul Madison) from the raised sticks of two young hoods in military fatigues.

  Eric told me, “We’re expecting a big turnout. Dr. Molina says this Grand Dragon guy's going to be on Channel Seven the day before, so that’ll stir up more interest. The Carol Cathy Cane show.”

  I said, “I bet she asks him to wear his robe.” Ms. Cane had her own program now, a local talk show along the Oprah Winfrey model. According to Carol's ads, she wasn’t afraid to “ask her celebrities daring, confrontational questions”—like “Mrs. Wollston, are you and the governor really as happily married as you want us to think you are?” And, “Mayor Yarborough, honestly now, haven’t you sometimes wished you were born white?” I had no intention of ever appearing on the Carol Cathy Cane show.

  Just after Eric left, Dr. J.T. Molina himself slammed through the hall doors into the room and stood there (in his uniform of old chinos and worn-out tweed jacket), deep-breathing, while his eyes, the round glasses glittering, shot from the photo-mural to the desks to me. His wife, Debbie, wasn’t with him; either she’d left by another exit or was still in the back office crying. By the time he reached me, he’d gotten his breath under control, but the large, burning eyes didn’t look at all calm. “You didn’t have to come here,” he told me brusquely. “I was just on my way to you. I thought your sergeant said around five was good. It's ten ’til.” He looked at his watch. Two of his knuckles were cut open and bleeding.

  I said, “I was in the area, so I dropped by. What's the problem, Professor? Besides the ones I can already predict if you’re really planning a rally in Cadmean Stadium.” I figured he was going to say that Brookside had gotten another threat, or suspected he was being followed again; they’d reported no one suspicious hanging around him since he’d told me about Newsome tailing him months back. No more anonymous letters had been reported either.

  By a painful effort, Molina tried to focus, but sounded rattled. “Problems with the stadium? Oh, that's all tentative. Mind if we walk somewhere? I’ll walk you back to Municipal, okay? Look, I’d like to get out of here.”

  I could believe it. But before we reached the thick glass entrance doors, two young volunteers ran over with questions for him. I stepped aside, but I got the impression that they were trying to line up a very famous liberal movie star for this stadium rally. Jack said, “Tell her people we’ll schedule around her. Any date she wants.” The other volunteer wanted to know “how far to go in Hickory tomorrow.” Jack said, “If they start the razz, wait and see how Andy wants to play it. If nothing goes down from their side, and the crowd's limp, toss in a few, okay?”

  Toss in a few what? Cheers? Jokes? Insults? I assumed they weren’t talking about bombs in front of me. Probably hecklers: if there were no real ones, they’d supply their own, so their man would have something to spark off. Molina's ideological purity didn’t seem to interfere with his nuts-and-bolts approach to the campaign any more than his personal problems interfered with his ideology. He then swept a handful of Brookside brochures into a manila envelope, bit open a Magic Marker, scrawled in large letters across the front, “First Methodist Church. 1500 King St., 9:30, Hall Rally,” and handed it to the volunteer. “Somebody should be there,” he told the student. “Try Kim first.”

  I said, “Why don’t you give that to me? I’m having dinner at Alice MacLeod's in a couple of hours. She said she was going to that meeting.” I took the envelope before they could answer, then said, “Okay, let's go walk, Professor.”

  Jack Molina walked fast. I’ve been called “Lincolnesque” as much for my lanky legs as my lofty soul, but I had to damn near trot to keep pace with him. He wasn’t in the mood to talk much either. That was okay, because I’d gotten some disturbing ideas about Molina in my head that needed mulling over. One of them had to do with his handwriting.

  When we rushed past Giorgio's, I looked to see if Paul and Lee had left. They had. The waiter quickly turned away before I could hit him with any more of my Italian. (There wasn’t much more, but he couldn’t know that.) Persisting in sociability, I asked Molina if he’d seen Jordan West lately. He said, “Not really.” I asked if Brookside had decided yet on a nominee for lieutenant governor. He said, “I’m not in on that.” Since he’d resigned his teaching position at Haver, I asked what he would do should Brookside lose. He said, “He won’t lose.” Of course, what I was really wondering was why, if Molina both knew of, and was enraged by, his wife's fling with Brookside, he hadn’t resigned from the campaign, in which, if anything, he seemed more fervently involved than ever. But I suppose his answer would have been that the dialectic imperative couldn’t be bothered with a puny case of adultery. Still, it was clear that, inside, Molina was all twisted up about Andrew Theodore Brookside. Lord knows, I shared the feeling.

  In no time, and with naturally none of this discussed, he and I were back at the foot of the municipal building. Or I was at the foot. He was halfway up the big stone steps. Suddenly he turned, and sat down, as if that step had been his destination all along. Below, on the sidewalk near the marker to Hillston's war dead, three college-aged picketers circled with FREE GEORGE HALL signs. They shouted greetings at Molina, and he waved both arms at them. Then—as people swept around us on their way out of the building—he abruptly started talking. “Look…okay, look, Mangum. The stakes are too high to dick around. I’m going to bear my fucking throat to your teeth here, and just hope I’ve read you right.” His glittering eyes blazed up at me.

  This extraordinary image—from one who’d never struck me as the Jack London type—was unsettling; all I could manage was a shrug as I sat down beside him on the steps. He appeared to take it as confirmation that I didn’t plan to sink my incisors in his jugular vein. He said, “Lewis is very vulnerable on that secret racist college club shit.”

  “True,” I agreed. “Elitist racism annoys just about everybody.”

  “Andy wants to push on it. Drop the tone down a level. If he does, Lewis is going to get down and dirty too.”

  I agreed with this also, but added, “Lewis may not need a shove in order to squat down low. It may be already on the agenda.”

  If Molina's eyes had actually been lasers, instead of just resembling them, there would have been nothing left of me but ozone. He nodded. “That's what I want to talk about.” He moved his gaze to the picketers. “Let's put it like this. Circumspection and prudence— in private matters, okay?—are not the virtues Andrew Brookside has always…valued in the past, as highly as other…more ‘heroic’ virtues. There are dangers in such a position.”

  Jesus! The man's detachment was downright freakish. Was I completely off the wall about the content of that screaming match I’d just overheard? Had the Molinas really been fighting about something else entirely—maybe her plans to dump family life for a singing career, something like that? No, I didn’t believe it.

  I smiled agreeably. “Well, that's true. You don’t read much about ‘prudent heroes’ in plumed helmets. Most big heroes are more your hyperhormone type guys. They get a destination in their heads— like, say, Holy Grail, Golden Fleece, Moscow, Moon—and they just whoop and charge straight at it, hacking up the interference on the way. Nope, circumspection wouldn’t do, would it?”

  He could even smile too. He did so. But then his hand squeezed down on his knee hard, and the cut opened up on one knuckle. He sighed through tightened teeth. “Okay. If Andy's put his ass in a sling, we need to know now. I’m told you asked him if Coop Hall had given him a copy of a videotape in which…,” he flinched just a bit, “in which Andy is having sex with a call girl, a black woman.”

  Now if he’d just said “having sex with a call girl,” I might have figured Brookside had told him I’d made this preposterous claim and that it wasn’t true, but that, for obvious reasons, he (Molina) wasn’t sure he believed Brookside, so he’d come to me. But Molina had said “a black woman.” That meant either Brookside had told him what was on the tape, or he’d seen the tape himself. Because I’d never mentioned to Bro
okside the color of Ms. Touraine's pigmentation. Of course, I’d already assumed Brookside was lying—he had a reason to lie, and Hamilton Walker didn’t—but I’d only assumed. Molina was confirming it. Why, was clear from his next questions. “Do you have direct knowledge of such a tape? Do you know of the existence of any other copies? Do you have a tape?”

  I looked at his penny loafers. It was a little surprising he kept them so highly polished, given the mussed look of the rest of his clothes. I thought awhile. I looked at my cordovans. They could use a good shine, not to mention new heels and soles. Finally I sighed. “Jack, I hear a lot of questions from you. I don’t see a lot of throat bared. If we’re gonna dicker, let's do like Julian and Andy, let's get down and dirty, okay? So why don’t you come on upstairs to my office. There's not enough flesh between me and this stone step.” I headed inside, and he followed me.

  The marble lobby was crowded because the Hall trial had just adjourned for the day. Bubba Percy stood scribbling notes in the open doors, wearing a new baggy linen suit and a Panama hat. Inside the courtroom I saw Isaac and Nora piling paperwork on Miss Bee Turner. “What a fucking asshole,” muttered Jack Molina, with a jab of his hand at Percy. “All of a sudden, he's Zola. ‘J’ accuse!’ ”

  “Hey, be grateful. The Star flip-flopped and endorsed Brookside, right? You can thank Bubba for that.”

  “Coop spent months trying to get Percy to do a piece on George. All he got was a run-around. Then bam, Coop's a big dead hero. People magazine runs a piece. The Times runs a piece. All of a sudden, Percy acts like he's Cooper Hall's official memorialist. Did you read his thing about Coop in Harper's?”

  “Bubba had an article in Harper's?”

  “Oh yeah. ‘The Day a Young Man Died.’”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Read the article.” He looked at me carefully. “How's Rosethorn feeling about George's chance this time?”

  “Better than last time.” I gave up waiting for the elevator, and led Molina over to the stairwell.