by Pascal Marco
He stopped and turned back to the receptionist. “May I use your restroom to freshen up a bit first?”
“Of course,” she said, motioning behind her desk. “Right over there.”
Stan entered the restroom and locked the door behind him. He ran the water full force in the sink. As he did, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed his office back in Phoenix.
“Yvonne. Hi. It’s Stan. Yeah. I had a good flight. Do me a favor, would you? Would you please get me a list of all the subcommittees Senator Clayton R. Thomas from Illinois serves on for the Senate Judiciary Committee? Yes. That’s right. Text it to my cell stat. Okay?”
Stan hung up, flushed the toilet, ran the water in the sink a few more seconds, and then exited the restroom. The receptionist smiled at him as he went back to the door that led to the hallway to Senator Thomas’s office.
When he got there, Clayton’s door was open. Stan peered in and saw the senator sitting in a leather swivel chair behind an impressive wooden desk. His back was to the door and he was speaking softly into the phone as he wrote some notes on a pad sitting on top of a smaller desk against the wall. A huge map of Africa covered two-thirds of the wall, which was filled with about a dozen colorful masks. Two large shields also adorned the wall and two long spears placed over each of the shields dominated the space. The African-motif items looked like authentic tribal artifacts. Stan walked in but wasn’t sure if Clayton heard him come into the room.
He stood for a moment while Clayton continued to speak in whispered tones. Stan cleared his throat. The chair spun slowly around. Clayton smiled and waved for Stan to take a seat in one of the two chairs across from his desk. Stan obliged him. Clayton turned back and continued his conversation for a moment longer and then hung up the phone. He then turned back to Stan, stood up, and extended his hand across the huge desk.
“Mr. Kobe, is it? I’m Senator Thomas.”
“Senator Thomas.”
“Welcome to Chicago. First time here?”
Stan hesitated. “Yes. Very first.”
“Well, well. You’re in one of the finest cities in the world. None better. You can have New York. And L.A.—well, too many Hollywood types out there for me. Chicago’s the heart and soul of this country. It’s my home. And also, I might add, home of the new World Champion Chicago White Sox!” Clayton paused a minute to pick up a picture from his desk. It showed the senator shaking hands with a White Sox player. “You should recognize this player,” he said as he pointed to the picture. “Paul Konerko. He’s from your neck of the woods.”
“Yes, Senator. He graduated from the same high school I did, Chaparral. Like to think the White Sox couldn’t have done it without him.” As Stan spoke, he couldn’t help but feel cheated he wasn’t able to be in his hometown when the White Sox won their first World Series in eighty-eight years. He and Mr. Fleischman had always dreamed of the Sox making it to the Series, promising each other that if it ever happened they’d go to Comiskey Park together to watch every game. Hearing Clayton boast now about the White Sox winning the most recent World Series surprised him. The more significant feeling Stan had was the pain from the memory of the loss of Mr. Fleischman, rather than savoring the glory from the momentous victory of their beloved team.
The senator’s deep voice broke into Stan’s past thoughts. “And how is my old friend Andy Thomas down there in the great city of Phoenix? He hasn’t become a Democrat like me now, has he?”
“Oh no. No. I don’t think so, sir. I think Governor Napolitano would have let you know that,” Stan answered as they both chuckled.
“Well then. What is it? I understand you folks have taken some new initiatives down there to halt this rampant invasion of our country by these undesirables and their illegal drugs?”
“You’re right, sir, we have done that. One way has been via a very hard-working multiagency task force we’ve had intercepting this criminal element as they move or plan to move various contraband back-and-forth across the border. We’re talking guns, methamphetamines, cash, and, of course, human cargo.”
Senator Thomas shook his head. “As a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, you know my commitment on stemming the tide of illegal activity across the border. My record speaks for itself.” The senator got up from his desk, walked over to a side table, and grabbed some papers. As he did, he looked back at Stan. “Have we met before, Mr. Kobe? Possibly at a hearing on Capitol Hill? You look awfully familiar.”
Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, Stan squirmed in his chair and began cracking his knuckles. He didn’t immediately reply to Clayton’s question, although he was tempted to blurt out: Don’t you remember me? Don’t you recognize me? Clayton—it’s James!
“No, I don’t believe I’ve ever met you at any hearing, Senator. I’m certain I’d remember that.”
“Well, you just have one of those faces. You know,” Clayton replied, sitting back down at his desk. “So why are you here exactly?”
“As I mentioned, Senator, our task force has been working on intercepting this activity and recently picked up a couple of very unsavory characters. We’re holding them in Arizona. They were caught conspiring to transport illegal goods back and forth across the Mexican border.”
“Good job,” Clayton said. He opened a humidor on his desk and turned it to Stan. “Cigar? They’re Cuban.”
“No thank you.”
The senator took one for himself, he snipped the edge with a gold cigar clipper, then clamped the huge cigar between his teeth. He struck a match and pulled the cigar from his mouth. “You don’t mind?”
Stan shook his head. The senator put the cigar back to his lips and lit it, puffing at it until it was fully ignited. Stan had never seen a cigar that long and that fat. The stogie reminded him of the photographs of Fidel Castro and his ever-present signature Cohiba cigar.
“Go on, go on. I’m always interested in hearing stories of the fine work of the patriotic men securing our borders,” Clayton said, puffing away. “Men and women, that is,” he chortled.
“Yes. Of course.” Stan forced a smiled at the senator’s obvious attempt to be politically correct. He went on. “Well, speaking of someone being from ‘your neck of the woods,’ these two losers, Senator, are from right up here. From your Oakland neighborhood. They have outstanding warrants out against them here by Chicago PD.”
“Is that so? Have our local authorities started extradition proceedings for them to get them back from your state?”
“That’s just it, Senator. If they do, we won’t cooperate. We don’t want to extradite them back here. Governor Napolitano and our county attorney want them charged and tried in Maricopa County first. They want to make an example of them. Show the nation how tough we are on border security and such. As a matter of fact, they want me to handle the case personally.”
Stan paused and closely watched Clayton’s body language. The senator rolled the immense cigar slowly in his mouth and squinted his eyes. Nearly twenty years of bargaining with defense lawyers told Stan that Clayton already knew all of this and that the two of them were now merely entwined in a game of cat and mouse. At that moment, a text message beeped on Stan’s cell. He excused himself while he scanned the message, then he continued his conversation.
“I apologize. As I was saying, I’m holding them on an Indian reservation,” Stan said. “Even their lawyer will have a tough time finding them.”
Clayton stopped puffing and pulled the cigar from his lips, staring blankly at Stan. Based upon the text message he had just received on his cell phone, Stan wondered at that very moment if the senator already knew this information.
“Why, I believe that’s illegal. Isn’t it, Mr. Kobe? As a matter of fact, as a fellow lawyer, I’m certain it is.”
Stan’s cordial tone turned challenging. “Very illegal, sir. But we all do illegal things in our lives. Every one of us. I haven’t met a person yet who hasn’t done something that couldn’t be considered illegal, sometime, somewhere on this grea
t big earth of ours. Have you, Senator?”
“I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to, Mr. Kobe.”
“Well, I did a little research on you before I came in here today. I hadn’t realized it until a few minutes ago before entering your office, but then it hit me like a brick in the head, or maybe I should say, like a bat in the head.”
Senator Clayton took a deep puff and blew the smoke skyward. He tipped his head slightly downward and looked directly at Stan as the smoke slowly cleared.
“You’re a member of a couple of Senate Judiciary subcommittees. One is Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security. The other is the Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security subcommittee. Isn’t that correct, Senator?”
“That’s right. That’s common knowledge. What is your point, Mr. Kobe? I’ve got a town hall meeting later today I need to prepare for and I had hoped you were bringing me something meaty I could use there. Catching those two gang members is definitely something we should announce tonight.”
“I never said they were gang members, Senator.”
“Well, I just assumed—”
“We all make assumptions, Senator. Question is, what do we base those assumptions on, hearsay or inside knowledge?”
“You’re trying my patience, Mr. Kobe. If this is some political maneuver by your Republican boss to gain headlines in my state—”
“That would be a wrong assumption, sir. As I assumed wrongly all these years that I was invisible, courtesy of the Witness Protection Program, a program I might add, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Marshal’s Service, which just so happens to fall under the Attorney General’s office.”
“Spare me the civics lesson, Mr. Kobe. I’ve been in Washington over twenty years. I think I know the organizational flow chart of the United States Government!”
“Indeed you do,” Stan shot back. “That text message I just received came from my secretary. You’ve also been a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Drugs for the last twelve years, and chairman for the last six. That didn’t register right away. That is until her message told me this subcommittee holds all the purse strings for the U.S. Marshal’s office, the folks who monitor the Witness Protection Program.”
“And your point is?” the Senator asked.
“My point is, it’s been you who’s helped keep me alive all these years. Hasn’t it, Clayton?”
CHAPTER 36
As Stan sat in the chair across from the senator’s desk, he stared at Clayton, waiting for a reaction to his accusation. None came. The senior U.S. senator from Illinois merely continued to roll the cigar between his thick lips and waft billowy puffs of gray-white smoke into the room. The silence seemed deafening to Stan.
What if I’m wrong? Maybe the senator wasn’t involved in protecting me all these years.
He began to crack his knuckles, nonstop, one after the other.
Clayton strode out from behind his desk and closed the door to his office. He walked over and stood behind Stan, no more than one foot behind him. Stan sat perfectly still, unable to see the senator behind his back. Clayton dropped his hand down hard on Stan’s shoulder, clasping it in a strong grip. The prosecutor flinched.
“I never thought I’d ever see you again,” said Clayton in a halting voice.
Stan jumped from his chair and faced his long ago friend eye to eye. Inches apart now, Stan noticed a faint hint of moisture, forming in the corners of Clayton’s eyes. Stan embraced his friend, giving him a bear hug. Clayton returned the gesture, squeezing him hard.
“Whoa, big fella,” Stan cried. “You don’t know your own strength. Don’t make me smack you upside your head again and give you another scar.”
“Sorry, old friend,” Clayton laughed. “I just—I—”
“I know what you’re feeling. I feel the same way.”
Clayton took a seat in the other chair next to Stan’s. “Please, James, sit down. I want to have a good, long talk with you now … now that you know.”
“I never thought anyone would call me that again. James. It sounds so good. Sounds real good.”
“You don’t know how many times I wanted to contact you—you know, after I found out where you were,” Clayton said.
“Why didn’t you? I always wondered about you, too. And then, a number of years ago, right after I joined the Maricopa County State’s Attorney’s office, I found out doing some pretrial research that you were the lawyer on a case that came up as a precedent. I couldn’t believe it. Both of us had become lawyers. I followed your career from that day forward. And when you were elected to the House and then the Senate, well, no one was prouder.”
“‘Ceptin’ maybe my momma. She beamed when I graduated college and then law school. She always thought I’d end up like my brother. Dead with a bullet in the back of my head. Shot in one of the stairwells of the Olander Projects. After the Fleischman trial, she had enough with living in hell and sent me away, down south to her sister’s in Springfield. She didn’t want her family part of any more deaths, part of any more killings.
Clayton took a long pause and scanned his old friend from head to toe.
“But I don’t understand something, James. Why now? After all these years? Why did you risk it all by showing up here at my office?”
“Fleischman,” Stan answered.
“That was an unfortunate incident. It changed all our lives.”
“Unfortunate incident? Is that what you just called it?” Stan stared at Clayton, waiting for him to finish pleasuring the cigar he rolled in his mouth, circling its wet end with his thick tongue, before he got an answer to his question.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t let go after all these years, James.”
“Let go? Are you serious? They murdered him. They admitted it. And aren’t you forgetting about my family and me being taken from our home? Sent to fucking Arizona? How do you let something like that ‘go’?”
“James. We were just kids. Anyway, that was thirty years ago. It’s the past. It’s over. A long-gone memory. We’ve all moved on.”
Stan furrowed his brow, attempting to comprehend Clayton’s perception of these tragic events. He had truly become the quintessential politician, Stan thought, spinning, in his own mind at least it seemed to Stan, that the murder of Manny Fleischman was perceived by him as nothing but the unfortunate outcome of the senseless actions by some poor, misguided youths.
“How can you dismiss it like that? You seem to forget, Clayton, you were an accessory to a murder. I could have IDed you. But I didn’t. You’d never be where you are—”
“James, James, James,” Clayton interrupted, clenching the dwindling Cuban between his pearly white teeth. “I guess that heat must have shrunken your brain all those years out there in that relentless sun. How hot does it get again? Hundred ‘n’ twenty? Shiiiiit. How can a soul brother live in that kinda heat?”
Stan squirmed in his seat. “What’s your point, Clayton?”
“My point is, old friend, those boys were found not guilty by an irreproachable judge in juvenile court. The case is closed. Their records are sealed. We’ve all moved on. Why, Monroe Clarke is an upstanding member of our fine community of Bronzeville now. He and Tyrone Witherspoon are on my payroll, running a youth program I sponsor at The Carondolet Center over on Thirty-Ninth Street. Those two are helping boys every day find the right path. Helping them get good jobs in our community.
“Matter of fact, even Bertrand Rhodes has turned a new leaf and is now the Third Ward alderman. Can you believe it? Now that’s an accomplishment. Don’t you agree? Did you ever imagine in your wildest dreams that these former bad boys would do good some day? Turn their lives around and make up for all the wrong they’d done? They’re giving back to their neighborhood, not taking away any more.”
Stan glared at Clayton as he extolled the virtues of the killer Pick and his henchmen’s current exploits. His stomach turned, imagining the incorrigible gangsters in their new roles as stalwarts of th
e community.
A knock at the door interrupted them. “Yes. Come in,” said the senator.
The door opened. The receptionist stood in the doorway.
“Yes, Janeequa. What is it?” the senator asked.
“Senator Thomas. I need you to come out to the lobby for a moment, sir.”
“One minute, Janeequa. I’ll be right there.”
“Yes, Senator.” She exited the room, but left the door ajar.
“I’ll be right back, James. Make yourself comfortable. Help yourself to a Scotch with that water.” The senator pointed to a fully stocked bar, then left the room.
When Senator Thomas got to the lobby, several of Chicago’s finest stood in front of and around the reception desk.
“Senator,” one of the police officers addressed him.
“Officer?” the senator leaned forward to get a closer look at the cop’s name badge.
“Officer Leo Cronin, sir,” the uniform replied, pulling his name badge toward the senator to make it easier for him to read. “We’re looking for a Mister Kobe. The cabbie that dropped him off here earlier called our precinct commander.”
“Is that so? What on earth for?” Senator Thomas replied.
“He said his fare, Mister Kobe, gave him instructions to call the number Mister Kobe had handed him on a piece of paper.” Patrolman Cronin continued. “The phone number was to District Commander Abbatti’s personal cell phone, sir. I was told by him that the driver sounded pretty anxious.”
“Really?” the senator said, walking closer to Officer Cronin. “By the way, I went to law school with a Leo Cronin. Any relation, per chance?”
“My dad drove a garbage truck, sir.”
