“Militia types,” said Myrna. “Aren’t they the car bomb guys?”
Watson nodded. “I entered my appearance on behalf of car bombers.”
“He ain’t no fucking car bomber. That’s Harper fishing. Besides, car bombers or no, the case is yours. And more money has arrived. Now don’t freak over this militia shit. When the Democrats are in power, anybody with a gun in their house is considered militia. Remember Ruby Ridge? Rutger Lupine? How about Richard Jewell? The government’s prime suspect at the Atlanta Olympics bombing? ‘Sign this waiver of
your rights,’ they said. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just pretend. We’re making a training session video. You can star in it. It’s not real. Trust us.’ These Eagle Scouts or whoever could be weekend paintball warriors for all we know. Are you going to believe the government? Harper? He wanted to be a pro golfer, but he wasn’t making enough money giving lessons, so he went to law school. Now he’s a tanned matinee idol for a jury of TV watchers. He’s a good lawyer, but he’s on the job because his dad is Frank Donahue’s best friend. Even if it’s a real militia, these guys don’t blow up the cars of criminal lawyers.” She stopped and tilted her head. “Let me think.” She shook her head. “No, that was some other lawyer they blew up. I don’t think he was a criminal lawyer. Probably a tax lawyer.”
Watson thought about going to retch somewhere in private, but fear had paralyzed him.
“Nothing to worry about,” she said, sounding for a split second like she was reassuring herself, as well. “I worked for these outfits before.” She glanced at him. “Maybe it was even them. Order of something? Eagle Patriots? I get them mixed up. Anyway, you do your job by making the government prove every element of their bullshit case. You get paid well, and then the next time they call, you politely and firmly tell them that you are overcommitted, and you will not be able to devote the time their case deserves. And if that doesn’t work, you tell them you have untreatable, highly contagious end-stage spinal meningitis. Just don’t get involved with them. Don’t become their regular lawyer. Take them case by case. Professional distance,” she concluded emphatically, “is the key. I get involved only with my drug clients. The nice ones.”
Watson swallowed and tried to imagine what it would be like, being polite and firm and keeping his professional distance from car bombers. He barely noticed as she segued into the Whitlow case.
“Besides,” she said, while fixing him with a serious look, “you’re retained counsel, now. Which means there’s no way out, except maybe in a box.” Then she smiled. “Which is good,” she said brightly, “because Dirt has been hard at work for you. He has been mingling with the unwashed masses.” The corner of her mouth curled as she fingered another sheaf of her investigator’s reports. “Incoming filth alert. He’s been to the base at Fort Fuckup and asked the neighbors about activities in and around the Whitlow manor.”
“He went to the base? Did he talk to Mary Whitlow?”
“Everybody but,” she said. “Mary’s hiding somewheres, and I think
the government’s helping her do it. But we got some Dirty notes. Filthy notes. First, your client’s request for info on neighbor Lucy Martinez. Dirt says Lucy’s a window watcher. Someday she’ll be captain of Neighborhood Watch. She’s big on parking violations—anybody parks in her spot, she calls in and gets them towed.”
“That’s what Whitlow said about her,” Watson added, recalling his prison interview with his client, trying to rally to the role of retained counsel without fainting.
“So, Dirt asked Lucy about Elvin Brawley. What’d he look like, how often did he visit, how long did he stay?
“Lucy says, ‘Sign language instructor? The deaf, colored fella? Sure, always came on foot in civilian clothes and always carried a briefcase. But he never did stay long enough for any sign language lessons, as near as we could tell. He came to the Whitlow quarters maybe four or five times. But he stayed like less than five minutes. Not long enough for sign language, or for anything else. Just came and went with a briefcase.’ Confirmation on the briefcase by neighbor Hilda Pence, who saw Elvin walking down the street with it the day he died. Hilda figured it was those computer-engraved poetry pamphlets they said he sells.
“So Dirt asked Lucy if it ever looked like Mary Whitlow was having an extramarital affair. ‘Not from what I seen,’ says Lucy. In Lucy’s opinion, hubby’s the frisky one. He used to bring a pudgy, bleached blonde over from the trailer court of an afternoon when the wife was off to work at the printing plant.
“So when they first saw the black guy come around, the neighbors figured Mary knew about her husband’s two-timing and was making it revenge in four-time, but here she says it again: ‘He never stayed long enough for nothing like that. Either that or he was very quick. Besides, when he did come around, James Whitlow was usually sitting outside in his car smoking cigarettes and watching the house.’ ”
“Watching the house?” asked Watson.
“Lucy’s two doors down,” said Myrna, “and according to Dirt, there’s only one parking stall for each housing unit. Parking is a major perk on the base, and people get ticked when somebody parks in their spot.”
“The cops didn’t tow it,” said Watson. “That’s what Buck wanted to know. Lucy had it towed.”
“Twice, according to her,” said Myrna, “Whitlow parked a car in her stall. Then he just set there smokin’ cigarettes and looking at his own
house. So one day, Lucy ran to the PX to pick up some groceries, and when she came back, there was Whitlow again, parked in her spot, sitting in a Ford smoking cigarettes. She gave him a tap on the horn and he backed out. Then guess who came out of the Whitlow unit with a briefcase?”
Watson made a face and shook his head.
“That’s right,” she said. “Elvin Brawley. According to Lucy, Whitlow pulled out and deliberately drove the other direction, away from his place, then came back five minutes later and parked in his own parking spot.”
“Too weird,” said Watson.
“The day of the murder,” Myrna continued, “old Lucy was working, waiting tables at the local Perkins, probably one of the reasons the MPs never talked to her. When she comes home, she finds that car parked in her spot again, looks like the same one, even though the stall in front of Whitlow’s place is open. ’Course, this time he’s not in the car, he’s off being charged with murder. She doesn’t know that yet. She only knows there’s a car in her spot again. So, first she goes in and calls the Whitlow household. No answer. Then she goes back outside and notices that the passenger side of the Taurus is unlocked, she opens it because she sees there are keys still in the ignition, and she is thinking about moving the sucker herself. She chickens out at the last minute, but guess what she sees on the dashboard?”
Watson furrowed his brow. “A car bomb?”
“Fuckin’ dummy,” said Myrna. “The receiving end of a Fisher-Price nursery monitor, putting out nothing but static because the MP had turned off the transmitter before he left the premises. Remember the nursery monitor?”
“He was listening to them!” said Watson.
“Sounds like a routine,” she said, “with funny business going on inside, and Whitlow outside on guard, in case something goes wrong.”
Watson tried to imagine why Whitlow would sit outside his own house and listen to a deaf black guy meet for five minutes with his wife. Instead of thinking about whether the Order of the Eagles was preparing an explosive accessory for his Honda, he tried to imagine what Mary Whitlow and Elvin could be doing in the Whitlow house, while James waited outside. Memories tingled and attempted to surface. Whitlow had told him that she didn’t know sign language:
“I seen in the paper where she’s supposedly the queen of sign language now.”
So, if she doesn’t know
sign language, how was she talking to him? And even if she knows enough to get by, what was Whitlow listening to on the monitor? Sign language? Two people faintly scratching written notes to each other?
“Back to Dirt and Lucy. Lucy calls into base traffic and makes a big stink about not being able to park her car. The MPs call an off-base towing service to haul off the vehicle, and Lucy gets her parking space back.”
“That’s the car Whitlow wanted me to find out about for him,” repeated Watson. “Buck was afraid to go see about getting it himself. He thought the police had towed it because of the murder.”
“That’s good,” she said. “That’s good. But, now, apprentice criminal lawyer. What do we need to know?”
Watson looked up from his pad. “We need to know what happened in the house?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said dismissively. “What else?”
“Uh,” said Watson.
“The briefcase …” said Myrna.
“Yeah,” said Watson. “We need to know what was in the briefcase Elvin carried around.”
Myrna rolled her head around in a zigzag somewhere between nodding and shaking. “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “But how about this: Where
is
the fucking briefcase?”
Watson stared at her and felt his eyes get bigger.
“Hilda saw Elvin carry it into the house. Elvin gets carried out of the house dead. MPs and ambulance attendants come and go. FBI come and go. Everybody writes reports. Nobody writes about a briefcase.”
“You’re right,” said Watson.
The woman at the tow lot. He’d talked to her on the phone. Her voice sounded somewhere in the echo chamber of memory:
“Your wife was here saying she needed to get your briefcases out of the trunk because they had your credit cards and checkbook in them.”
“It’s in the trunk of the car,” Watson said excitedly. “The impound lot lady. She said Mary had tried to get briefcases out of the car, but they wouldn’t let her at them because she didn’t have title.”
“You are one smart fucking lawyer,” said Myrna. She fished through the pile of papers under the notes she had been reading and selected a single sheet. “Dirt,” she said with a grin. “He found out where base vehicles get towed to and paid a visit to Base Towing and Impound, Bumfuck, Missouri. The night dispatcher was very nervous. No way, no
how, was he going to let Dirt in to look around in any towed vehicle. The owner, a serviceman at Fort Fuckup, was coming for it next morning. Liability. Instant termination if anybody found out. The place is patrolled at night, fenced in with chain-link. No way, no how. Not even for Dirt.”
Myrna puffed again. “Five twenty-dollar bills later, the night dispatcher still will not allow Dirt onto the lot, but he does agree to provide a copy of the inventory sheet, owner’s name blacked out. The keys were in the vehicle at the time of towing. And whenever that happens, the entire vehicle, including the trunk, gets inventoried.”
Myrna passed Watson a flimsy photocopy that said “Impound Lot Vehicle Inventory,” containing two large boxed sections, one labeled “Passenger Compartment” listing everything from empty Burger King bags, one straw, two Coke cans, seventeen cigarette butts, one owner’s manual, six cassette tapes, one tire gauge, one ice scraper, one Fisher-Price nursery monitor …
“The nursery monitor,” said Watson.
“Keep reading,” said Myrna.
The box below, labeled “Vehicle Trunk,” listed one car jack, one tire iron, two oil rags, one rubber jug of windshield wiper fluid, one spare tire, a box of tools containing one socket wrench, etc.… two locked briefcases …
“It’s in the trunk of the car!” exclaimed Watson.
“
They
are in the trunk of the car,” said Myrna. “
Two
locked briefcases. And we can’t get at them. Not without going to the cops. And if we did that, I have a feeling things could get worse for the whole family. Better ask your client what he wants us to do next. He and Buck know what’s in the briefcases, and they don’t want us to know, I guess.”
“But the cops, the MPs, they must have known the car was there. Maybe they’re holding it for evidence.”
“Why?” she retorted. “It ain’t plated, and it’s parked in front of Lucy’s house, not Whitlow’s. I guarantee you if that car was on homicide hold it woulda been locked up in a concrete garage and torn apart for latent prints and blood by now. Nope. They don’t know about it. And if they thought the car had something to do with the murder, they’d lock it up tight and wait to see who came after it, which is what your client’s buddy was worried about. But then you would be assuming that military intelligence is more than a well-known oxymoron. You would be assuming that the traffic dispatcher somehow knew that Whitlow had been sitting in that car and then communicated that information
to the MPs. The right hand not knowing what the left is up to isn’t enough for the government; they even have trouble keeping track of the torso in between.”
Watson wanted to solve the puzzle of the briefcases. He wanted to defend his client to the best of his abilities and become a better criminal lawyer. But there was this niggling matter of car bombs. And what if Whitlow killed Elvin Brawley pursuant to his duties as an Order of the Eagles militiaman?
“Harper has transcripts of Whitlow talking about sending niggers back to Africa, and Whitlow’s got a poster in his garage of a black man in a gun sight,” Watson said. “I think you and Dirt better handle this thing. It’s turning out to be all factual anyway. You don’t need me. You take the money. I think I’ll look into getting a job as a legal research and writing instructor. It pays less, but the position has nothing to do with explosive devices.”
“You’re going to let Harper bluff you with a pair of deuces?” she asked.
“Harper’s thinking about throwing in conspiracy and a charge under the Violence Against Women Act,” said Watson. “Sounds like more than deuces to me.”
“He’s whistling Dixie in a dark graveyard,” said Myrna. “If he actually had Whitlow tied to the Order of the Eagles, he wouldn’t
tell
you about it. He’d let you plead to the hate crime bullshit and then bring a new case three months before Mr. Hate was scheduled to get out on good behavior.”
“Car bombers? Conspiracy? White supremacy?” said Watson. “I pass. I draw the line at terrorism and loss of innocent lives.”
“Whoa, kid,” said Myrna. “Don’t leave me now. We got no proof of Harper’s whimsical theories. I need you. I can pick at facts all day. That’s my job. But the jury ain’t gonna care about a couple of factual discrepancies, not if Harper can stand up and introduce evidence about how our client’s name is Mr. Bigot. He lives in a bigoty house, where he reads bigot books and goes on-line to chat with bigot pals. Here, jury, listen to some of his bigoty E-mail. His kid goes to bigot deaf camp every summer and comes home happy about bigotry. He has a really excellent tattoo and knows some good nigger jokes.