Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

Shapiro voice-commanded his car phone to call his wife. Her cell went immediately to voicemail.

  “She probably blocked,” he told Katz. “She’s probably at her parents by now. If something was wrong, I would have heard.”

  “I’m sure they’re okay,” Katz said reassuringly.

  The radio stayed on for the remainder of the drive as Katz hunted from news station to news station. She briefly searched through AM stations, pausing on a Maryland talk radio show in which caller after caller complained that “President Afraid” did nothing after the coastguardsmen were killed, and again after the FBI agents were murdered, sending a message that Jews could get away with anything. After a few minutes of similar calls, Katz returned to FM music stations.

  It was getting dark as they approached Washington’s suburbs.

  “Open the glove compartment, would you?” Shapiro said to Katz. “I printed out an email. It’s in there.”

  She removed a sheet of paper.

  “It’s from Aaron Hocksberg, a client of mine,” he said. “It has his cell phone number. He said to call when I got to DC. He’s heading the Massachusetts delegation to the march. Would you dial his number, please?”

  The sound of Hocksberg’s telephone ringing came through the car’s speakers, followed by a voice.

  “Aaron Hocksberg speaking.”

  “Aaron, Ben Shapiro. I’m outside DC. Did you hear about the bombings?”

  “Hear about it? It’s the only thing people are talking about. We don’t know if the president is going to pull the plug on the march. We’ve been on the phone all afternoon with every congressman we know, all of us here. You wouldn’t believe that people who came at us two months ago with their hands out and palms up for campaign checks won’t even get on the phone with us today. Ben, where are you staying?”

  “Staying?” Shapiro answered. “I never got around to booking anyplace and I expect there isn’t a room to be found in the city. Worse comes to worst, I guess I’ll camp out in my back seat.” He glanced at Katz and saw her smiling.

  “No problem, Ben,” Hocksberg said. “Stay with us. We’ve got a big suite at the Renaissance, using it as our base of operations. We’re crowded here, but we can squeeze you in. They can roll in a cot. Not a lot of privacy, though. Anyway, it would be good to have you close by, just in case.”

  “Uh, thanks, Aaron,” Shapiro said a bit sheepishly. “Aaron, you ought to know, I’m not quite by myself here.”

  Katz grinned, enjoying this.

  “Fantastic,” Hocksberg said. “You talked Sally into coming. Good for her. Can’t wait to see her again. It’s been a while. Rose is here with me, of course. I expect Sally is used to being the only shiksa in the room.”

  “Aaron, I’m not exactly with Sally at the moment,” Shapiro said, thinking how accurate that statement was in so many ways. “I came down with somebody else. I don’t think you know her.”

  Hocksberg was silent for a moment. “Whatever, Ben, whatever,” he said. “I’ll let Rose know Sally couldn’t make it.”

  “Thanks, Aaron,” Shapiro said, not sure why he added “but she’s Jewish, at least.”

  They found the hotel. Katz glanced at the back seat as they were taking their bags from the car.

  “I was sort of looking forward to that,” she said. “It doesn’t sound as if we’re going to get much time to ourselves, does it?”

  Shapiro looked at the rear seat, surprised at how relieved he was that he’d found such a well-chaperoned place for the two of them to stay. He hadn’t yet been unfaithful to his wife, not counting fantasies. As tempting and apparently available as Judy Katz was, Shapiro didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved by their housing situation. He decided to let events work themselves out over the next few days.

  CHAPTER 47

  President Quaid called senators Wayne Giddings, the Republican majority leader, and Grant Farrell, the Democratic minority leader, to meet with him at the White House. The president felt isolated, not the least by the almost complete refusal of the First Lady to speak with him on other than ceremonial occasions.

  “I’ll be up front with both of you,” he said. “I am at my wit’s end about what to do about this situation. The consequences of making the wrong decision are too scary to think about. I’m ready for firm actions, but I’m not willing to walk out on this limb by myself.”

  “Mr. President, we backed you before, about taking a firm hand with the Jews on those ships in Boston,” Sen. Giddings said. “None of my people bothered you about the way you handled that situation—well, except for Jane Struthers from New York. She has a constituency at home to answer to. You do what you have to do with this situation now, sir; just run it by us first so there are no surprises. I’ll tell you up front if I can’t back you on something.”

  “Same goes for me, of course, Mr. President,” Sen. Farrell said. “After all, sir, you might not be the dog I would’ve picked to head the pack in the first place, but you’re still our top dog.”

  “That’s what I expected to hear,” Quaid said. “My people prepared this for me to give to you. It’s a resolution Congress will pass.” He handed each man a one-page document.

  Sen. Giddings quickly scanned the page he’d been given. “This language looks familiar,” he said. “Where was this cribbed from?”

  “Good catch, Wayne,” the president said. “It’s almost word for word what Congress passed after September 11. This language was broad enough for Bush to do whatever he wanted, from invading Afghanistan and Iraq to listening in on every telephone call any American had with anybody outside the country. One of my legal eagles called it a congressional get-out-of-jail-free card for the White House.”

  “This language is awfully broad, sir,” Sen. Farrell cautioned. He handed the paper back to the president.

  “With all due respect, I don’t see any limitations in there. It pretty much says you can do anything anywhere to anybody. Am I missing something here, sir?”

  “No, Grant, you’ve nailed it right on the nose. This is what I want. This is what Congress gave W. Bush to fight terrorism. The bombing of those two malls was certainly a terrorist act. Nobody is going to deny that.”

  Quaid gave the two legislators a somber stare. “From what my people tell me, the timing of the bombings, that degree of coordination, was the work of some big organization, probably even a government. And those bombs were damn sophisticated, they tell me. A government did this. No, my people tell me that the Jews have taken a card from the Palestinians with this suicide bombing. And you know what that means, gentlemen. You both know what happens next, right?”

  “Uh, tell us, sir,” Sen. Giddings said.

  “More suicide bombings, that’s what happens next, goddammit,” Quaid huffed. “At least we hope that’s all that happens next. It isn’t shopping-mall bombs that keep me awake at night. There’s that other thing floating around, too.”

  “The nuclear thing, sir?” Sen. Giddings asked. “I was briefed on that, just me and four other senators, including, of course, my Democratic brother here. But there’s been nothing for three days. Nothing except rumors.”

  “Sounds like we didn’t appreciate how lucky we were to be facing Muslim terrorists,” Sen. Giddings said. “Despite years of trying, they never pulled off anything like this. And here the Israelis manage to get a bomb into this country three months after they get bombed themselves.” He paused.

  “So, what do you have in mind?” Sen. Farrell said.

  “This nation is under attack—attack from forces of a foreign state right in our homeland. For obvious reasons, we can’t attack the homeland of the nation that is attacking us. There is no Afghanistan, no Iraq for us to clean out in this war. This time the enemy is among us. That’s who is attacking us. This enemy among us. That’s who I intend to protect the American people from.”

  The president continued, his voice rising in volume, speed, pitch.

  “It’s not what’s happened so far that’s keeping me a
wake at night; it’s what is going to happen any day now—any day now. Do you understand that? More bombings for sure. More Americans killed. They don’t have to smuggle any more soldiers into the country. They have millions of them here right now. Millions. I don’t know if I can trust any Jew right now—not one.”

  The two senators sat stunned.

  “Give me that resolution. Bush got it. I want it. I am going to sign that legislation tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Hocksberg asked Ben Shapiro to come along to a meeting with Rabbi Garfinkle. Representatives of Jewish organizations from across the country were crowded into the office space when Shapiro and Hocksberg arrived. Rabbi Garfinkle was speaking. Shapiro had never met the man. He’d expected to see an old man with a beard, a stooped back and dark suit.

  Instead, the man standing in front of the group of forty or so organizers wore jeans and a corduroy shirt. Brown hair covered his ears and he spoke with a hint of a Southern drawl, but not enough to disguise the serious tone of his voice.

  “I just returned from a meeting with a representative from the White House,” he said. “Wilson Harrison, the new attorney general.”

  “Acting attorney general,” a voice shouted from a corner of the room. “I know him from law school. He was a jerk then. He’s worse now, from what I hear.”

  Rabbi Garfinkle continued, unperturbed.

  “I can’t say he was the most pleasant person I’ve ever dealt with. He was quite emphatic in what he said.” The rabbi paused to collect his thoughts. “He said the president wants the march called off. It is too dangerous, he said, too dangerous for a million people to gather in the city at this time.”

  “What he fears is a million Jews,” another voice called out. “That’s what he doesn’t want to see.”

  “Please, let me continue,” the rabbi said. “Mr. Harrison did not come right out and say it, but he hinted the government has received information about a plot against the marchers, that somebody, he didn’t say who, was planning on doing something horrible if the march goes forward.”

  “What did he say exactly, Rabbi?” a woman in the middle of the room asked.

  “He said a national security agency—that’s how he described it—a national security agency obtained information that an anti-Jewish organization planned on letting loose some sort of biological agent in the middle of the crowd tomorrow, Friday. That’s all he said, except to say that the president was concerned for our safety and that the president begged us to call the march off. So, what do we do?”

  “That’s a load of bullshit, pardon my Yiddish, Rabbi.” A man in the back of the room gently pushed his way forward to stand next to Rabbi Garfinkle.

  “Sam Lowenstein. New York. I’m with what used to be the ILGWU.” He looked around the room. “That’s the International Ladies’Garment Workers’Union, for those of you who were born yesterday.”

  He smiled.

  “We used to be a big-time union. In your grandmother’s time. I don’t believe one word from that asshole of an attorney general, or from his boss, the former great close friend of Israel, President Quaid. They’re scared shitless of having a million Yids camped out in front of the White House, that’s what this is all about. And they don’t have the political balls to ban us. So they’re making up this fairy tale to scare us. They want us to tuck our tails between our legs and go home. Then they’ll call us cowards. No way. I’m staying, and so are my people.”

  Rabbi Garfinkle looked around the room. “Anybody else?” he asked.

  A tall woman in a conservatively cut, expensive-looking suit raised her hand.

  “May I speak?” she said. “My name is Shirley Zarick. I am the chairman of the Hadassah Chapter for the Jewish Community Federation of Sonoma County; that’s near San Francisco, of course.

  “I agree with everything the gentleman from New York said, although I might not have put it quite so colorfully. And, as an aside, Mr. Lowenstein, my mother, may she rest in peace, carried her ILGWU card until the day she died. She sang ‘Look for the Union Label’to my children when she put them to bed. I agree one hundred percent. They are trying to scare us. Show us proof of this threat. Give us some evidence. If they can’t do that, then shame on them for telling lies. That’s what I have to say.”

  “Anybody else?” the rabbi asked.

  A man wearing a suit and tie, standing near the doorway, spoke.

  “Dan Glickstein. Feldman, Brownstein, Rabinowitz and Stern. We’re the law firm that donated this office space. What I want to say is that my partner, Sol Rabinowitz, works pretty much full time as a congressional liaison—you’d call him a lobbyist, I suppose. I had breakfast with Sol this morning. He said the Hill is buzzing with a resolution that Quaid is rushing through the House and Senate today.

  “Sol tells me that Quaid is trying to pull a Bush 9/11, that’s what it is. Sol says his people tell him they just took the war powers bill passed after 9/11 and changed the dates but nothing else. They’re gonna give the president the power to do whatever he wants, no limits, just like Bush got.

  “Remember what we got the last time they did that? War in Afghanistan. Everything that happened with Iraq. Syria. Yemen. That concentration camp at Guantanamo. Torture. Secret wiretaps. The damn Patriot Act. Sol tells me it’s going to be the same thing all over again. But this time it’s not because of the Muslims. This time their tails are on fire because of us. Jews, Jewish bombs, Jewish soldiers, the—pardon the expression—the full megillah. I tell you, this is what scares the daylights out of me, not some made-up story about unnamed anti-Semitic biological weapons.”

  Rabbi Garfinkle looked around the crowded room. Nobody else made any effort to speak. The rabbi smiled.

  “Now that is a minor miracle,” he said. “Forty Jews in the same room and nobody wants to say anything. I’ll take that as a consensus. The march goes on. I’ll get a message to the attorney general expressing our confidence that the police will be able to protect peaceful marchers from any threats.

  “For those of you speaking tomorrow, remember, ten minutes each, no more. For the rest of you, I’ll see you tomorrow at 10 a.m. To quote one of my favorite Jews from another planet, Mork from Ork, be there or be square.”

  Shapiro and Aaron Hocksberg returned to the suite at the Renaissance. Shapiro stopped in the hallway to surreptitiously check his cell phone for Sally’s message, feeling guilty that he’d ignored her telephone call during his drive to DC. There were two messages from his office, nothing from his wife. Fuck her, he thought. I know she called. If she won’t leave a message, I’ll be damned if I’ll call her again.

  Returning to Hocksberg’s suite, Shapiro found Judy Katz on the balcony engaged in conversation with a short woman. Katz’s face lit up as she spotted Shapiro. When Shapiro walked up to the two women, Katz placed her hand on his arm and left it there comfortably.

  “Ben, this is Sarah Goldberg,” she said. “Sarah’s from Portland, Maine. She is going to be speaking tomorrow.”

  Sarah laughed. “I’m only going to be speaking if I can figure out what I’m going to say,” she said. “I’d planned on talking about nonviolence. I still could, I suppose. My husband threatened to beat me if I do, though.”

  She saw the shocked look on Katz’s face.

  “Kidding, just kidding, that was a joke,” she said quickly. “I guess this is no time for jokes. Seriously, my husband was not especially upset by those mall bombings. He’s rather, to understate it, rather militant. To tell you the truth, I think he was jealous of the bombers.”

  Shapiro and Katz were silent, not knowing how to respond. Shapiro spoke. He sounded sad.

  “Sarah, I understand where your husband is coming from. Look, I’m a lawyer. I believe in the system of laws. But I’ll tell you, I don’t believe the legal system, or even the political system, is going to do the right thing now. No judge is going to stand in the way of this political wave.”

  “Especially this Supreme Court,” Katz said. “Mos
t of them have been there since the last time the Republicans ran both the White House and Congress at the same time. They’ll be the first ones waving the flag in front of the detention camps, like the Supreme Court gave its stamp of approval when Japanese-Americans were herded into concentration camps.”

  “I can’t disagree with you there,” Shapiro said. “The politicians are even worse. We can’t find a senator willing to sit on the podium tomorrow, much less vote to intervene to save what is left of Israel. No, it isn’t going to happen by either legal or political means. I’ve been tossing around at night thinking that Israel has been destroyed, that maybe a million Jews are in concentration camps run by Arabs instead of Germans, and that this country isn’t lifting a finger to stop it.

  “Even worse, what am I doing about it? Filing lawsuits that will get nowhere? Making speeches? As if words are going to save a single life or feed a single child in Israel. No, Sarah, I understand what your husband is saying.”

  “And just as bad, now we’ve got our own concentration camp for Jews sitting on Cape Cod,” Goldberg added. “And a president who seems to want to leave his name in the history books by stomping on Jews.”

  Judy Katz, standing between the other two, put an arm on Sarah’s shoulder and her other on Shapiro’s back, rubbing him lightly, casually, possessively.

  “I don’t think your speech tomorrow is going to make a whole lot of difference,” Katz said. “But why don’t we find a place for some lunch and we can work on the speech anyway?”

  Shapiro was silent as they rode the elevator to the lobby. He was shocked by his own words. It was the first time he’d expressed out loud a feeling growing in him for several weeks.

  If there is no legal solution and if there is no political solution, what course of action is left? If you know a holocaust is coming, what action is justified to try to stop it? Or, he thought, looked at another way, is there any action that would not be justified if it would help stop a holocaust?